Video Title: "The Private Sector In Disasters: An Introduction"
FEMA logo

Stephen Jordan, Snr VP and Exec. Dir.
BCLC - U.S. Chamber of Commerce
"Ninety percent of our companies don't deal with disasters on a daily basis, I mean much more than ninety percent.  And so the biggest challenge is just frankly, that dealing with disasters is not a core competency. So we have to learn, we have to rely on disaster experts, to tell us how to be able to relate, and how to function and all the rest of it."

Craig Fugate
FEMA Administrator
"We need to really reach out through the associations and through the partnerships on working with the private sector so they understand how we operate, we understand how they operate but more importantly we get past this artificial division that says government does this and the private sector does that and go, we need to be a team."

Bobby Fillyaw, Executive Director
Orange County TX Economic Development Corp.
"We struggled for some time after Hurricane Ike came through and devastated many of our chemical plants with water. These plants are critically essential to this community. These plants need their employees, they need them on site, and they need them to be working every hour of the day. The problem is that their employees also suffered losses of their homes and their livelihoods."

Craig Fugate
"What I learned over a lot of disasters was instead of competing with the private sector we really need to be working as partners. Oftentimes we've been asking the wrong question, we've been asking what the private sector can do to support our mission. We should be asking the question many times, What can we do to help the private sector to get back operational?  You know for every grocery store, for every pharmacy, for every hardware store that opens up, in a disaster area, means there's fewer demands for the government to provide those resources. And since the private sector already has a much more efficient mechanism for providing those services, it only makes sense to work as partners."

Bobby Fillyaw 
"It is imperative that businesses understand the ramifications of what happens when you have no power for an extended period of time, when your facilities are destroyed in some way or another, when you have no employees or your employees are suffering needs, how do you address that -- the best way to do that is to be prepared ahead of time."

Lynne Kidder, Snr VP Regional Partnerships
Business Executives for National Security
"Given the fact that so much of critical infrastructure is managed or controlled by the private sector, the most important thing business can do is really recognize the interdependence that exists in communities, and be prepared to work not only cross sector between public and private but also across industry sectors."

Stephen Jordan
"You look at the chambers from Beaumont, Texas all the way to Mobile, Alabama after Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, and we had what, over 120,000 businesses disrupted in the Gulf Coast just south of I-10, let alone the hundreds of thousands that were connected to all of that. So when you've got a chamber that's got 80% of its membership disrupted, you know they have a vested interest to try and be a part of the longer term recovery."

Craig Fugate
"How do we work to ensure that as we go through these cycles of disasters, we come out stronger and that we make our communities more resilient against future threats?  We're not going to be able to do that unless the private sector is part of the team."


Closing slate: For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov/privatesector

Slate: FEMA does not endorse any private sector organization.  Interviews with private sector representatives are presented for informational purposes only.